Mental health and ________ are very closely related.

Concept: In psychology and pedagogy, mental health is not defined merely as the absence of illness. It is described as a person's dynamic, ongoing capacity for adjustment — harmonising one's own needs, emotions, and behaviour with the demands of oneself, other people, and the surrounding environment. This capacity for adjustment is treated as the core indicator of psychological well-being.

Application: The statement says mental health is very closely related to a blank. Since adjustment is precisely the process through which a person maintains equilibrium between internal needs and external demands — the very process by which mental health itself is judged — “adjustment” is the term that correctly completes the statement.

Cross-check — why the other terms do not fit:

• attitude — a relatively fixed evaluative judgement (favourable or unfavourable) toward one specific object, person, or idea; too narrow and object-specific to represent the whole ongoing person-environment relationship that defines mental health.

• acceptance — a single act of acknowledging a fact, person, or situation as it is; one narrow component of coping, not the overarching adaptive process itself.

• avoidance — a withdrawal response that evades a stressor rather than engaging with it; recognised as a maladaptive coping style, the opposite of the constructive process mental health depends on.

So the statement is correctly completed by adjustment.